The right to modify one's personal data to fit one's life narrative provides an expression of agency in that data subjects could potentially choose the description under which their behaviors are understood, thus solving what Pariser calls the “one identity problem” of personalization [1]}. The concept of reificiation is particularly applicable here. Reification is the process through which people believe the contingent manifestations of ideology are understood as facts of reality [2]}. As the sociologists Berger and Luckmann write, “Reification is the failure to recognize that [social order] as humanly engendered. The decisive question is whether one still retains awareness that... the social world was made by men–and therefore, can be remade by them”[2]}. Put simply, the fear is that, as BBD platforms increasingly collect our personal data, their “thin” versions of our digital identities may begin to replace our “thick” personal identities. In the extreme, these thin digital identities may then be confused with our “true” ones, to our own detriment.
